News

What’s hap­pen­ing in aqua­cul­ture in the UK and around the world

MARINE Har­vest Scot­land has started mov­ing its cleaner fish (wrasse and lump­fish) us­ing a new lorry trailer, cus­tom fit­ted with in­di­vid­ual trans­port tanks.

These tanks were de­signed to im­prove and sta­bilise the trans­port en­vi­ron­ment dur­ing the lengthy trans­porta­tion pe­ri­ods.

This sys­tem and op­er­a­tion will re­duce mul­ti­ple hand net­tings and wa­ter changes and so di­min­ish any cumu- la­tive stress events on the cleaner fish dur­ing trans­porta­tion and at fi­nal dis­charge.The fish are now trans­ferred di­rectly from the hatch­ery to the salmon cage in the same tank and wa­ter that they were loaded into.

The tanks have been de­signed in­ter­nally and ex­ter­nally to pro­vide quick and ef­fi­cient load­ing/un­load­ing from the lorry trailer to the boat/barge, in­di­vid­ual mon­i­tor­ing and con­tin- uous life sup­port with ef­fec­tive dis­charge for the fish, plus a safer and much more con­trolled work­ing en­vi­ron­ment for the per­son­nel around the op­er­a­tion.

The tanks have also been suc­cess­fully de­signed and tested to be able to trans­fer fish at much higher stock­ing den­si­ties than pre­vi­ously, there­fore re­duc­ing trans­porta­tion costs. This lorry sys­tem will cover 50 per cent of the forth­com­ing cleaner fish de­liv­er­ies dur­ing winter, with any is­sues or im­prove­ments to be ad­dressed be­fore a sec­ond trailer is com­mis­sioned to cover all the com­pany’s cleaner fish.

Marine Har­vest pro­duc­tion co­or­di­na­tor man­ager David Gray said the sys­tem had been tri­alled for four months and went into op­er­a­tion last month.

‘Early indi­ca­tions show that is has been very suc­cess­ful, with ben­e­fits in not only fish wel­fare but also im­prove­ments in fish sur­vival,’ he said. ‘The sys­tem is more ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive due to the mo­bil­ity and ease of han­dling of the tanks and di­rect dis­charge of the tanks into the sea­wa­ter cages.’